Spider Shepherd 10 - True Colours (12 page)

‘Just turning into your street,’ said Whitehouse. ‘Where do you want it?’

‘Anywhere you can find a spot,’ said Shepherd. ‘Parking’s tight here at the best of times.’

Shepherd managed to bolt down his bacon sandwich before his door entryphone buzzed. He pressed the button to open the door downstairs. Whitehouse was with one of the men from the car pool. He introduced himself as Ian McAdam and handed Shepherd the keys to the X5 and asked him to sign a form on a clipboard. ‘All yours,’ said McAdam. ‘There’s a number in the glove compartment to call if you have any problems but she’s only got twenty thousand miles on the clock and we’ve never had any problems with her.’ He was in his twenties, with gelled hair and a small gold earring in his left ear. He nodded at Whitehouse. ‘I’ll wait down with the car – I saw a traffic warden down the road.’

McAdam headed down the stairs. ‘I’m running him back to Thames House,’ said Whitehouse. He was in his sixties, a former soldier who had been wounded in the Falklands War and who had gone on to serve as one of MI5’s armourers for almost twenty years. He had thinning grey hair and a shabby brown suit. Shepherd realised that he wasn’t wearing his trademark thick-lensed glasses. ‘You lost the spectacles, Mark?’

Whitehouse grinned. ‘Just had them lasered,’ he said. ‘Brilliant, it is. I can read a book without glasses for the first time in I don’t know how long, and driving is so much easier.’ He was carrying a metal case and he swung it on to Shepherd’s coffee table.

‘It’s a fourth-generation Glock 17, but there’s not much I can tell you that you don’t know already,’ he said. He checked the barrel was clear and handed the gun butt-first to Shepherd. Shepherd checked the action and nodded his approval. ‘Three clips, they hold seventeen rounds as you know, but I’ve put fifteen in each to keep the pressure off the spring.’ Shepherd took one of the clips and slotted it home. ‘Miss Button said we didn’t need to go heavy on the ammo, is forty-five rounds enough?’

‘More than enough,’ said Shepherd.

‘And she said a shoulder holster. You prefer leather to nylon, right?’

‘You know me too well,’ said Shepherd. Whitehouse grinned and handed Shepherd a dark brown leather shoulder holster. The leather had been recently oiled and it glistened as Shepherd stroked the leather. Whitehouse handed over two leather holsters designed to hold the clips. ‘If you want the spares on your belt,’ he said. He reached into the case and brought out two plastic-wrapped vests. ‘And these are courtesy of Mr Singh,’ he said.

Shepherd took the packages and ripped one open. He held out a white vest, about the thickness of a pullover. It had sleeves that reached to just above the elbows. He held it against his chest and smiled at the look of contempt on the armourer’s face. ‘You’re not convinced?’ he said.

‘Mr Singh swears by them,’ said Whitehouse.

‘But you’re not convinced?’

‘You know where you are with Kevlar and ceramic plates.’ He reached over and rubbed the vest that Shepherd was holding. ‘This feels like wool.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘I just don’t get it.’

‘He says it changes its structure when the bullet hits,’ said Shepherd. ‘Nanotechnology.’

‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ said Whitehouse.

‘I could put it on now and you could take a shot at me.’ He grinned at the look of surprise on the armourer’s face. ‘Joke,’ he said.

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said Whitehouse. ‘But I have to say I’d feel a lot happier if I’d had the chance to run a few tests myself. I look at them and I ask myself if they would really stop a bullet.’

‘According to Amar they’ll stop any handgun at close range and an AK-47 from fifty feet,’ said Shepherd. ‘But like you, I’ll believe it when I see it.’ He grinned. ‘Hopefully it won’t come to that.’

‘And let’s not forget that if the person who’s shooting at you knows what they’re doing, they’ll probably go for a head shot anyway.’

Shepherd laughed. ‘Yeah, that’s the truth.’ He put the vest down and picked up the Glock again. ‘You took a bullet, in the Falklands?’

‘Two,’ said the armourer. ‘One in the calf, one grazed my head. According to the lads the second one didn’t count, it was just a flesh wound. But an inch to the left and I wouldn’t be here now.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’m not a great one for war stories, Spider.’

Shepherd rubbed his shoulder. ‘I’ve just been thinking about the time I got shot, that’s all. You never forget it, right?’

‘Every time I get into the shower I see the scar,’ said Whitehouse. ‘The scar in my head is hidden by my hair, but you can see that the hair around it is greyer than the rest. But yeah, you never forget.’

‘How bad was it?’

‘The wounds? Not too bad. There were plenty that got worse – two hundred and fifty-five of our guys didn’t come back. But the Falklands was nothing like what you went through in Afghanistan. We didn’t have IEDs or ambushes or men pretending to be women, or suicide bombers. At least we were fighting soldiers, even if a lot of them were kids.’

‘Do you know who shot you?’

Whitehouse shrugged. ‘Could have been any one of half a dozen,’ he said. ‘We were coming down this hill towards where the Argies were dug in. It was all about speed, back then, they knew we had to retake the Islands within weeks or we never would. There was no wait and see, it was full steam ahead, lads, and to hell with the bullets. This was the second hill we’d taken and it went pretty much the same way. Their lads were dug in and firing up the hill, we came charging down with as much firepower as we could muster. Then once we got to within about fifty yards of their position they’d just throw down their weapons and surrender. It was weird, Spider. They knew the Geneva Convention meant that you can’t shoot an unarmed man. So as soon as they knew they were beaten they threw their guns down. So you had the ridiculous situation where they would shoot the guy next to you, killing him stone dead, but then they’d drop their gun and you can’t fire back. Bloody stupid, if you ask me. Anyway, I got hit in the leg but that didn’t stop me. Then a round went under my helmet, grazed my head and exited at the back. Hurt like hell but no real damage. There was a lad next to me, only just turned twenty, took a bullet in the face. Just blew his face away. Will Dunbar, his name was. I’d given him some smokes the night before and we’d had a bit of a chinwag. I saw the guy who shot him. He was a young lad, probably a teenager. As soon as Will went down the lad chucked his rifle and put up his hands.’ Whitehouse held up his hand, the thumb and first finger half an inch apart. ‘I came this close to slotting him, I swear to God. I had a bead on his chest, my finger was tightening on the trigger, there was blood trickling down my neck and I had the full adrenalin rush. Then my sarge starts screaming at me to lower my weapon, that it was over. I was still going to fire but the sarge pushed the barrel down. I tell you, it was the hardest thing I’ve had to do because that kid deserved to die. No question. He shot Will in the face and because it was war that was OK. Then he drops his gun and I have to round him up with the rest of them and he’s now back in Argentina probably with a bloody medal.’

‘It’s even weirder out in Afghanistan and Iraq,’ said Shepherd. ‘Over there they don’t have uniforms, they use women and kids as suicide bombers and they fire missiles from mosques. Yet we carry on following the rules of war that are supposed to apply to soldiers in uniform. It’s like fighting with one arm behind your back.’

‘Lions led by bloody donkeys,’ said Whitehouse. ‘They should just have let your lot run things out there. Done it as Special Ops instead of putting bodies on the ground.’

‘I’m not sure that would have been any better,’ said Shepherd. ‘You can’t defeat an enemy that fights like that. The Yanks should have learned that from Vietnam. And if not from that, the fact that the Russians had to leave Afghanistan with their tail between their legs should have shown them which way the wind was blowing.’

‘Shouldn’t have been there in the first place, is that what you mean?’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘It’s not my call, Mark. I went to Afghanistan because I was told to go. I was eight years old when the Falklands War broke out, but looking back, I can see why we were there. The Argentines invaded British territory. End of. We had every right to do what was necessary to take it back. But you look at Afghanistan and Iraq and you have to ask yourself why British troops were ever sent.’

‘You know why. Because Tony Blair was Bush’s lapdog. Did what his master told him to.’ The armourer shrugged. ‘You’re right. At least I knew what I was fighting for.’

Shepherd put down the Glock. ‘If you got the chance to take that shot, to shoot the guy who killed Will, would you do it?’

Whitehouse tilted his head to one side as he looked at Shepherd. ‘That’s one hell of a hypothetical question,’ he said. ‘Where’s that come from?’

‘Just wondered, that’s all.’

‘It was a long time ago,’ said Whitehouse. He closed his metal case and snapped the locks shut. ‘More than thirty years.’

‘Time heals all wounds?’

‘I often wish I’d told the sergeant to go to hell and had just pulled the trigger,’ said Whitehouse. ‘That was the time for the bastard to get what he deserved. In the heat of battle. That is one of the great regrets of my life. I went to Will’s funeral and met his mum and his dad and his sister and it fair broke my heart when they asked me what had happened. I had to tell them, right? I had to tell them that Will was shot and that the guy who shot him went unpunished. They wanted to know why he wasn’t at least put on trial and you have to explain that it was war. But then if it was war why wasn’t I allowed to shoot him?’ He grimaced at the memory. ‘I’ll never forget the way his mum burst into tears and his father tried to comfort her, all the time looking at me with the unspoken question in his eyes. Why? Why didn’t I do something?’

‘Like you said, he’d surrendered. That changes everything.’

‘Yes, but it shouldn’t. You can’t be a killer one second and a prisoner of war the next. That’s just not right. But if you’re asking me if I’d slot him now, then no, I wouldn’t. He’d be in his fifties now, he’s probably a father himself, maybe a grandfather. He wouldn’t be the same man who’d killed Will all those years ago.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Now, if Will had been my son, then it might be different. You’ve got a kid, right?’

Shepherd nodded. ‘Yeah, Liam. He’s sixteen this year.’

‘Will was only a few years older. See now, that I would never forgive. If someone killed one of my kids I’d never forgive or forget, I’d slot them no matter how much time had passed.’

‘Yeah, amen to that,’ said Shepherd.

Whitehouse stood up. ‘Well, better be going.’ He held out his hand and the two men shook. ‘I’m not sure what’s on your mind, Spider, but you take care. There’s an old Chinese proverb. A man setting out for revenge needs to dig two graves.’

Shepherd nodded. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said.

After the armourer had left, Shepherd made himself a mug of coffee and phoned Charlotte Button. ‘I’ve got my car, gun and vests,’ he said.

‘And Grechko is expecting you, so you’re good to go. He’s at home all day and says he’ll see you after dinner. You’re to liaise with Dmitry Popov.’

‘I’ll Popov and see him,’ said Shepherd.

‘Just be aware that the Russians aren’t renowned for their sense of humour,’ said Button. ‘Popov’s nose will be out of joint, so bear that in mind.’

‘I’ll treat him with kid gloves,’ said Shepherd. ‘But at the end of the day I’ll be the one carrying the gun.’

‘Please don’t shoot any of Grechko’s bodyguards,’ said Button, only half joking. ‘I really couldn’t bear the paperwork.’

The Bishops Avenue was a ten-minute drive from Shepherd’s Hampstead flat. The tree-lined road ran from the north side of Hampstead Heath to East Finchley. Houses on the road had never been cheap but in recent years prices had gone stratospheric and it was now commonly known as Billionaires’ Row. There were just sixty-six houses on the road, each standing on a two- to three-acre plot. As and when older properties came on the market they were snapped up, demolished, and replaced with multimillion-pound mansions, with the result that only the word’s richest families could afford to live there.

The president of Kazakhstan had paid £50 million for his mansion in 2008 but many in the street were now valued at double that figure. Ten of the houses were owned by the Saudi royal family with a collective value of almost a billion pounds, and the Sultan of Brunei’s residence there was rumoured to have solid gold toilets and baths.

The houses that Shepherd drove by were a strange mix. There were designs based on traditional Greek and Roman styles with towering columns and triangular pediments, but there were also huge modern cubes of steel and glass and massive country houses that would have been more at home on a Scottish grouse moor. Most were hidden by high walls and electric gates and all had the warning signs of private security firms predominantly displayed.

Shepherd had often driven down the street and was always struck by the thought that the mansions resembled prisons. He couldn’t imagine a more soulless place to live. The residents usually flew in by private jet and were taken to their luxurious mansions by limousine to be protected by high walls and guards. There would be no popping around to a neighbour’s for a chat. In fact no one ever walked down The Bishops Avenue and if anyone did decide to take a stroll they’d be under CCTV and human scrutiny every step of the way.

Grechko’s mansion was about halfway down the avenue. It was fronted by a brick wall that was a good ten feet high and there was a black metal wheeled gate. He pulled up and sounded his horn. The gate steadfastly refused to move and he blipped the horn again. There was a loud clicking sound and then the gate slowly rattled back, revealing a drive a hundred metres long leading to a sandstone mansion with half a dozen towering chimneys. There were tennis courts to the left of the house and a double-door garage to the right.

As the gate withdrew, Shepherd edged the car forward. He had barely moved a dozen feet when a large man in a black suit appeared in front of the car holding up his hand. ‘Turn off the engine!’ he shouted.